George Gurdjieff Quotes

Essence is the truth in man; personality is the false.

"Man has no individual i. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "i"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, "i". And each time his i is different. just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion."

In order to awaken, first of all one must realize that one is in a state of sleep. And in order to realize that one is indeed in a state of sleep, one must recognize and fully understand the nature of the forces which operate to keep one in the state of sleep, or hypnosis. It is absurd to think that this can be done by seeking information from the very source which induces the hypnosis.
....One thing alone is certain, that man's slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.

In this connection, it is interesting to remark that I, as well as many others, noticed that when he himself used these sayings in conversation, it always seemed to every hearer that they could not have been more apt or better put, but that if anyone else made use of them, they seemed to be entirely beside the point or improbable nonsense.

The man who has the disease of tomorrow is the most unfortunate man in the world.

Only he will deserve the name of “man” and can count upon anything prepared for them from above, who has already acquired corresponding data for being able to preserve intact both the wolf and the sheep entrusted to his care.

During the latter three centuries the process itself of their existence has become such that in the presences of most of them during their daily existence those 'being-confrontative-associations' almost no longer arise, which usually proceed in three-brained beings thanks to every kind of new perception, and from which alone can data be crystallized in the common presences of three-brained beings for their own individuality.

Well then, when your favorites, existing in such a manner in their 'daily life,' go to these contemporary theaters and follow the senseless manipulations of these contemporary actors, and receive 'shocks' one after the other from every kind of reminiscence, already previously perceived, of not less senseless and absurd notions, then during this waking state of theirs, they willy-nilly obtain more or less tolerable being-associations, so that when they go home and go to bed they sleep much better than usual.

Don't judge a man by the tales of others.

Namely, to learn why and in what manner my suffering in this instance could assist in the increase of my labor-ability. The beneficent result for me from this “Inner-World Revolution” occurring within me was that from that moment on I could freely, without influence of partial feelings, again think in my habitual way.

Every one of those unfortunates [human beings] during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognisant of the inevitability of his own death as well as of the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognisance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallised in them that has swallowed up the whole of their Essence, and also that tendency to hate others
which flows from it.

The power of changing oneself lies not in the mind, but in the body and the feelings. Unfortunately, however, our body and our feelings are so constituted that they don’t care a jot about anything so long as they are happy. They live for the moment and their memory is short. The mind alone lives for tomorrow. Each has its own merits. The merit of the mind is that it looks ahead. But it is only the other two that can "do."

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.

The being of two people can differ from one another more than the being of a mineral and of an animal. This is exactly what people do not understand. And they do not understand that knowledge depends on being. Not only do they not understand this latter but they definitely do not wish to understand it.

Love of consciousness evokes the same in response Love of feeling evokes the opposite Love of body depends only on type and polarity.

The worse the conditions of life the more productive the work, always provided you remember the work.